Page 31 of Ground Zero (Lantern Beach Blackout: Detonation #3)

“ W e have to warn them,” Sheridan stated.

Maverick glanced at her, his thoughts still churning. “How are we supposed to do that? Walk into Norfolk’s security office with evidence that makes me look like a terrorist? They’d arrest me on sight.”

“Then we go through official channels?—”

“Which channels? The FBI that has at least one mole? Blackout, where someone on my own team is setting me up?” He pushed back from the table, frustration burning in his chest. “Every legitimate avenue we have is compromised.”

Maverick stood and paced to the window, checking the street outside out of habit. His mind spun through possibilities, options, trying to find a way through this maze of betrayal and deception.

Then a thought struck him.

“Wait.” He turned back to Sheridan. “I might know someone. Trey Franklin. We served together in Afghanistan. He’s stationed at Norfolk now, works for base security.”

She stared at him, concern in her gaze. “Can you trust him?”

“He saved my life twice in Kandahar. I saved his three times.” Maverick pulled out his phone, then hesitated. “But contacting him means potentially exposing our location.”

“It’s a risk,” Sheridan agreed, remaining in her seat. “But Trey might be our only shot at getting someone on the inside to take this seriously.”

Maverick stared at his phone, weighing the options. Trey was solid, trustworthy, and completely outside the Blackout-FBI circle that had been compromised. But reaching out meant potentially putting his friend in danger.

The weight of it settled over them both.

The attack on Naval Station Norfolk wasn’t just imminent. The gun was already loaded.

Now they were just waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Sheridan watched Maverick pace the small living room, his phone still clutched in his hand. A war played out on his face—the need to act versus the risk of exposure.

She understood his dilemma because she was fighting the same battle herself.

“Let’s think through our options.” She needed to approach this like the FBI agent she was trained to be. “We have three choices as I see it.”

Maverick stopped pacing and looked at her.

“First option: We go official. I call Cook, you call your bosses, and we dump everything we know, hoping the good guys outnumber the bad guys.”

“We risk exposing ourselves,” Maverick muttered. “But we potentially save thousands of lives.”

“Right. Option two: We stay dark. Try to stop this ourselves using whatever resources we can scrape together.”

“Without backup, without authority, without real resources.” He shook his head. “Against a terrorist organization that’s been planning this for months.”

“Which brings us to option three.” Sheridan met his eyes. “Selective trust. We identify one person—maybe your friend Trey—we believe we can rely on. Someone completely outside this mess.”

Maverick set his phone on the coffee table and sat down across from her. “Each option could get us killed. But doing nothing definitely gets people killed.”

The weight of the responsibility pressed heavy in his gaze, the same weight Sheridan felt crushing her own chest. They held thousands of lives in their hands, and one wrong decision would mean catastrophe.

“There’s another problem.” Something had been nagging at her about the evidence they’d found, those hidden files. “I know we talked about this before, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that this attack isn’t just cyber.”

“I agree,” Maverick said, his face grim. “I believe it’s centered on the naval base and that someone is already physically inside.”

He started to say more but stopped.

“What is it?” she asked.

He hesitated before continuing. “Honestly? I don’t want to be a fear monger. But I have a really bad feeling about this. Someone is gathering intelligence and giving it to our enemies. They named this mission Ground Zero. You know the last time that phrase was used by the media? After 9/11.”

“You think they’re planning something equally as horrific?” She held her breath as she waited for his answer.

He shrugged. “I’m not ruling that possibility out.”

This was even worse than she thought.